“Use your words”—as if they’re tame, but words are wild
absences conflating-distinguishing all,
tumbles of thundering tranquility (you,
dear reader, other, lover, mother of time),
artifacts wailing, raging, syncopating,
galumphing (you falling between), smoothing space,
The Wedding
We gather together in waving wild fields–
forgotten, fattening, old Father Big Bang;
promiscuous, pregnant, new Mother Presence;
twinning quarks singing duets; you and I dance,
following, not following, borrowed patterns
under this blue sky that will not come again.
stretch
Last night, from the ferry, I saw a long stretch
of soft mauve reflecting the sharp yellow lights
of Brooklyn. It was a wisp until I saw
the Verrazano, the tops of its towers
and cables were not there; the realization
of a vast expanse of cloud, pressing unseen,
shade
she conspires to be
in what she is limpid shade
beyond the hot sun
but holding it close
she is the ocean she scents
holding sky and light
The Rothko Room at The Phillips Collection
entering stillness
falling into muted light
raking in silence
resonating tones
falling into flowing shades
of slow shifting moods
shadows
before this world lies
down in metronomic time
before loss shadows
absence into space
before I fall out of you
nothing sole awakes
Postlude: Consummation
Viola: Why must I ever be the thrusting “man,” wild,
uninvited, in this wordy conjoining?
Olivia: Not undesired, once heard, I . . . You are . . . O love,
truly to know you, just one time, in the flesh.
Viola: What’s the sense in a fleshy consummation?
Do I not stand before you, an unveiled nude?
